Written in Blood (35 page)

‘Yes,’ said Barnaby tersely. ‘What is it?’

‘Merely an idea—’

‘Would that be the idea you had last night when I asked you if you’d just had an idea and you said “No, sir”?’

‘Well . . .’ Meredith smiled and shrugged his elegant shoulders. ‘I thought it best to check my facts first. I needed to re-read Mrs Jennings’ statement. And work on from there.’

‘Work on?’ Barnaby spoke softly but there were few present who did not feel the wind of change. An ominous tightening of the atmosphere. Inspector Meredith was one of that few. Sublime in his ignorance, he continued.

‘Yes. You were cursing the elusive Jennings and the fact that all the information we had picked up led nowhere. But I had this niggling feeling that there was a name somewhere that had been overlooked and I was right. That name was - Barbara!’

At this triumphant conclusion he glanced smugly round the room as if expecting, at the very least, a round of applause. Then, stimulating the silence with a jaunty back flip, he explained, ‘The secretary.

‘Unfortunately I only had her Christian name. Tried to get the rest from Mrs Jennings, who wouldn’t play, then from the servant, who didn’t know. So I thought of his publisher. Seemed to me they were bound to have had dealings. I was lucky. Though it was late they had a book-launch party on and people were still around. Her surname, Cockaigne, was an unusual one and they were able to tell me she lived in North London. From then on it was a piece of cake. I rang and got an answerphone. Now, and this is where it gets really interesting—’

‘I hope you’re not going to give the entire plot away, Inspector Meredith,’ said Barnaby in a voice that reverberated like a hammer striking frozen steel.

The general assembly was by now slipping into its moon boots and ear muffs. Troy, leaning against the Ryvita panels, closed his eyes with pleasure as Meredith went bombasting on and thought, What a scrote!

‘The drill on the tape is that she’s away for five days, OK? And I don’t believe that is a coincidence. She’ll have left an address with someone - a friend or neighbour - in case of an emergency. People always do. Find her, chief inspector, and it’s my belief you’ll find Jennings.’

The silence which followed this improvisation went on for quite some time. Barnaby appeared almost distracted. Frowning, he moved his papers to and fro in an aimless heap. Eventually he said, in a matter-of-fact tone:

‘Let me try and explain to you, inspector, how we work here.’ He directed a glance of freezing disdain in Meredith’s direction. ‘We work as a team. I cannot over-emphasise the importance of this. Indeed you will find it a common element throughout the Force and I must say I’m amazed it was not drawn to your attention at Bramshill. It makes for speed and efficiency, you see. Often it saves lives. Of course we are all individuals, some perhaps more so than others, but when we have a little insight we don’t run off and hug it to ourselves, follow up on our clever little tod without telling anyone and then produce our conclusion while hogging centre stage like some spoiled kid at a party.’

‘I was only try—’

‘I haven’t finished!’

‘Oh.’

‘Dissemination of knowledge at every level and between every authority is vital. You only have to look at the Sutcliffe cock-up to see what happens when men of a rank to know better start playing Hooray For Our Gang instead of Pass The Parcel.’ He paused. ‘You’re looking somewhat perplexed, Meredith. Didn’t you get to hear about the Yorkshire Ripper in your ivory tower? Your intellectual eyrie in the sky?’

‘Of course I did.’

‘Then you’ll know that women died unnecessarily because information was not quickly and properly conveyed.’

‘I thought that was a technical mix-up. Incompatible computers.’

‘Not entirely, by a long chalk.’

‘Still it’s not as if . . .’ Meredith tailed off, shrugged and said, ‘They were tarts, weren’t they?’

Barnaby stared across the room, his face momentarily distorted with disgust and disbelief. He said, ‘I’m not quite sure I heard you correctly, inspector.’

‘Prostitutes.’ Meredith looked around for confirmation. ‘Isn’t that right?’

The chief inspector’s large, grizzled head sank a little between his heavy shoulders. His neck all but disappeared.

‘Just remember what I said. All information, all ideas and insights, however slight, however cock-eyed, get tossed into the pool. That’s what briefings are all about.’

‘If you say so, sir.’

‘I do say so, inspector. And you’d better believe I’m saying so or you’ll find yourself off this case and back on a six a.m. shift for the rest of your stay here, which, I can assure you, we all hope will be extremely brief.’ He stood, very suddenly for such a heavy man, then, propelled by anger and abhorrence, quickly left the room.

Troy followed, catching up with his boss in the corridor. ‘Bloody fascist.’

The sergeant responded, with some hesitation, ‘He is the chief constable’s nephew, sir.’

‘I don’t care if he’s the smile on the queen’s backside. He starts that caper here I’ll cauterise him.’

Barnaby slammed into his office. Troy took the door in his face, stilled the shivering glass panels with the palm of his hand then entered, as unobtrusively as he knew how. He gave it five hundred before clearing his throat.

‘Want me to have another go at Clapton this morning, sir?’

‘No. He’ll keep. We still haven’t talked to Amy Lyddiard. It’s hopeless at the house with that Dobermann of a sister-in-law. Go and collect her, would you? Gently does it. Tell her it’s for fingerprints.’

After Troy had left he sat staring at the wall wondering how he had come to miss Barbara. There was a time when he missed nothing. Certainly nothing as clearly under his nose as this had been. It was not even a matter of sloppy reading. Christ, he had done the interview where her name had come up himself. Thick as thieves, Ava Jennings had said they were. He remembered the exact words. Thick as thieves.

Barnaby cursed Meredith with his sharp eyes and sharp mind and sharp, upmarket connections, then cursed himself for meanness of spirit. He felt old and heavy and tired. Not to mention in dire need of further sustenance.

 

Sue, still pneumatically propelled on waves of exhilaration, floated between the twin pineappled pillars of Gresham House, up the drive and round to the servants’ entrance. In her excitement she tugged the old-fashioned bell extremely hard and rather a lot of wire came out, refusing to return when she released the engraved metal pull.

Sue let it dangle. She waited, smiling, while the sodden leaves from the wisteria dripped on to her uncovered head. Her arms still ached slightly from delivering Rex’s shopping, which had included quite a lot of heavy tins. She had been relieved to find him in improved spirits. Still fretting over the possibility that he may have played some unwitting part in Gerald’s death, but determined not to be overwhelmed by the suggestion. He was even talking about going back to work.

Amy, wearing rubber gloves and with a head scarf over her curls, opened the door. Sue stepped inside. The two women stood looking at each other.

‘What is it?’ Amy cried. ‘
What is it?
’ Then, seizing her friend’s hands, ‘You’ve heard from Methuen!’

‘Yes.’

‘Sue - how marvellous!’

‘They want me to go to lunch.’

‘Lunch! Ohhh . . .’

‘I’ve been dancing all morning. Up and down the stairs, all round the house, in the street.’

‘Of course you have.’ Amy beamed, said ‘Ohhh’ again, gave Sue a great hug and dragged her by the arm towards the kitchen steps. ‘You must come in.’

‘But what about . . . ?’

‘Taking a catalogue back to Laura’s.’

Amy had been polishing silver, which lay, in a heavy box lined with frayed green baize, on the old deal table. There was a saucer of rosy paste and several black-stained cloths. The air had a sweet chemical scent.

Sue sat down and started laughing in a rather delirious way, breaking off now and again to say, ‘I don’t know what to do with myself’ and ‘I think I’m going mad.’

Caught up in all this exhilaration, Amy, crying ‘Don’t set me off’, was promptly set off. Covering her mouth with her hand and choking with gaiety she gasped, ‘If you don’t look at me . . . I’ll be all right . . .’

And that was how they eventually calmed down, by staring determinedly at a point beyond each other’s shoulders. Amy wiped her face and said, ‘We should celebrate. But there’s nothing to drink in this place. Not even cooking sherry.’

‘Funny you should say that . . .’ Sue produced from her shopping bag a white cardboard box, a bottle wrapped in tissue paper the colour of methylated spirits and a corkscrew. ‘Voila!’

She slipped a rubber band off the box and lifted the lid to reveal a large, gooey chocolate gateau. The bottle contained white wine from the Côte de Gascogne. Sue attacked the green plastic seal with the tip of the corkscrew.

‘It’s to share around the play group really. After all, if it wasn’t for them there’d be no Hector.’

‘Poor little mites. They’ll be paralytic.’

‘The mothers, silly. There’s squash for the kids.’ Sue reached out for a knife.

‘Not that one. It’s still got polish on.’

Amy assembled a bread knife, two plates and two forks and fetched a couple of wine glasses from a cabinet in the drawing room. They were thick with dust so she rinsed them in tepid water under the tap.

The village store did not go in for top-flight patisserie. The cake tasted pretty synthetic and the wine slightly warm, yet every mouthful was ambrosial. Amy, chasing a final flaked almond around the margin of her plate, said, ‘That was wonderful. I hope it all didn’t cost too much.’

‘Nearly six pounds.’

‘Sue.’ Horrified, Amy laid down her fork. She understood only too well the gaping hole such an amount would leave in a skin-tight budget. ‘How are you going to manage?’

‘Don’t know. Don’t care actually.’

‘But it’s your Sainsbury’s shop tomorrow. Look.’ She laid slightly chocolately fingers on Sue’s arm. ‘Let me treat you. I’ve still got some money left from—’

‘No, Amy. Why should you?’

‘Because I’m your friend.’ Sue stubbornly shook her head. ‘A loan then. And when you’re R and F you can pay me back.’

‘I don’t think it’s an unreasonable amount to spend. Not to celebrate such a brilliant piece of news.’

‘Of course it isn’t.’

‘Some men would have taken their wives out for champagne and a slap-up meal.’

‘Indeed.’ Amy hesitated as to how to continue. She had no wish to carry on a conversation along unhappy lines. On the other hand Sue seemed to be, quite justifiably in Amy’s opinion, somewhat aggrieved. She also sensed a wish to dwell further on the subject of domestic injustice.

‘What did Brian say when you told him?’

‘That they had no intention of publishing. They had perhaps seen some slight merit in my sketches and were keeping vague tabs in case I came up with something worthwhile in the future.’

‘What absolute and utter rubbish!’ Amy was so angry her face had gone bright red.

‘It is,’ said Sue. Then, after a slight pause, ‘Isn’t it?’

‘The mean-spirited little toad.’

‘I didn’t believe him.’

‘I should jolly well hope not. If that was all, they’d have sent the drawings back with an encouraging letter asking you to keep in touch.’ Sensing a slight diminution of the radiance opposite she followed through with an interrogative clincher. ‘Right?’

‘Right.’

‘That’s settled then. Now - what are you going to wear?’

‘God knows. Everything I’ve got’s held together with Sellotape and willpower.’

‘We’ll go round the charity shops. They have some lovely things. And this time it’s a loan and no argument. You must look nice.’

‘Thank you.’

‘After all, she might take you to the Ritz.’

‘W-e-l-l.’ Unaccustomed as she was to literary lunches this did strike Sue as flying a trifle high. ‘Probably not the first time.’

‘You must tell me every single thing about it. From the minute you set foot in the restaurant till the minute you leave. What the place is like, everything you eat and drink, what the waiters are like and the other diners—’

Sue started laughing again. ‘I’ll never remember all that.’

‘Right up to the time you help her into a taxi.’

‘Why will I have to do that?’

‘Oh, she’ll be well away by then,’ explained Amy airily. ‘They all drink like whales.’

Sue regarded Amy’s amused, animated, totally involved expression and warm brown eyes with feelings of deep affection and gratitude. The old saw which promised that when in trouble you soon found out who your friends were had never struck her as all that profound. Of course, in a crisis, people rallied round, sometimes out of genuine concern, more often perhaps because they welcomed the opportunity to become briefly involved in lives crammed with more dramatic incident than their own. But how much harder was it to truly rejoice in another’s good fortune, especially when your own had been so savagely cut short.

‘It’ll be you next time.’ Sue stretched out her hand, slipping it, for comfort, into Amy’s. ‘Once you’ve finished
Rompers
they’ll all be fighting over it.’

For a moment Amy did not reply. She appeared withdrawn and a little sad. Sue wondered if Ralph had come into her mind. If Amy was thinking how pleased he would be to know that she was writing a book. She went on quickly, ‘And I’ll be able to help. I’ll get an agent - you always can once you’ve signed a contract - and I shall insist they take you on as well.’

‘Oh, Sue . . .’

They both fell silent, acknowledging the splendour of the new situation. The glorious difference between yesterday and today. And when I wake up tomorrow, thought Sue, it will still be real. No one can take it away from me.